While the establishment of formal trade organisations of workers was partially deterred by the passing of the Combination Acts, it did not prevent agitation amongst the weavers locally, who pressed Parliament for a regulation of their wages. Together with others, the journeymen weavers of Derby sent a petition asking for a method of settling wages, pay and price of labour from time to time.

Similarly journeymen calico printers presented a petition to Parliament from Derbyshire and a few other counties in 1804, against the large number of apprentices then in the trade. The price of goods was based on the adult wage of 30 shillings a week, while apprentices were paid only four shillings to seven shillings. [1] Consequently, a flood of this cheap labour could enable the masters to secure massive profits. There was a ratio of one apprentice to one journeyman in Derby, the worst record in the country, so naturally there was considerable support in the county for the petition. [2] It should come as no surprise that Parliament fell on the side of the masters and yet another petition proved necessary in 1806, when a Select Committee concluded that either all restrictions should be abolished, or additional restrictions about apprentices should be introduced. The general experience, especially in the textile industry, had led to the conclusion that Parliamentary appeals and craft guilds were no solution. The way was open to contemporary style trade union bargaining, once the tactic of Luddism had been found wanting.

Despite the fact that the Grand Jury at the Derby Assize in 1819 had severely expressed its disapproval of all combinations and advised people to keep the peace, other trades continued to follow the most recent example of the framework knitters in the organisation of trade protection societies – or trades unions. In 1817 a man of the name of Snow had been reported as travelling across the Midlands, including Derby and Belper, agitating amongst the stockingers, thus testifying to the continued organisation in that trade. [3] But others had followed suit. The bricklayers of Nottingham, who were in dispute, appealed to their fellow tradesmen in the surrounding towns and counties, including Derby, not to break their strike in 1814 [4], indicating some very early organisation in the area in that trade. Although it was not until May 1825 that a Derby branch of a bricklayers’ society claimed public existence. [5]

Another early trade union was the Union Society of Printers, Cutters and Drawers, founded in the three counties of Lancashire, Cheshire and Derbyshire. No sooner than it was known to be in existence than it was declared to be an illegal organisation in that the object of the society was to “prevent the masters from using machinery by agreement of the workmen”. [6] Despite the strict control of the law, organisations continued to be founded. These societies ranged from local stick clubs to powerful national friendly societies. Trades unions were at once friendly societies, playing a social insurance function, and trade regulating bodies. Not all friendly societies were trade unions, but the experience of both was mutually beneficial. All these societies thrived, despite the law.

Total Population Members of Friendly Societies [7]
1801 1803 1815

Derbyshire 161,142 22,681 22,412
National 8,872,980 704,350 861,659

Against the background of guilds, rebellions, political reform and revolutionary societies, the growth of the unions was fast and strong. In particular, the heritage of the secret friendly societies was very powerful in the trade unions – even to the use of the term ‘Lodge’ for local branch. Many of the superficial activities of the friendly secret societies were common to the early unions. The Brushmakers had a ‘call sign’ of five whistled notes, making a clear recognition tune. The Masons had a secret (but well known!) hand signal and the Boilermakers held their glass in a special way. An important friendly society aspect to the early unions, which actually played a major part in controlling the numbers of skilled workers within specific trades, was the system of ‘tramping’ from town to town seeking work. (For more details see coverage later in this chapter.) Trampers were the first ‘organisers’ of the early trade union movement, in that they kept the previously local trade societies in touch with each other. Most of the societies in Derbyshire used the tramping system and, of course, members of lodges from other towns came through Derby on a ‘tramp’. (The term for a tramper – ‘foreigner’ – denoting a non-local man was used in, at least, Midlands’ workshops until the beginning of this century and, of course, the modern day worker uses the term for doing a job for himself in the bosses’ time!)

The United Society of Brushmakers began to co-ordinate between the main cities of the trade from the 1770’s. Derby’s clubhouse was at the Lord Nelson, while the Staveley Society met at the Green Man. [8] The clubhouse was very much a centre of the society’s life. Apprentices would get their certificates, after their seven-year stint, presented at the clubhouse, where they paid for their ‘footing’ by buying drinks for their workmates. Operating in this semi-clandestine way, it was quite easy for the burgeoning trade union movement to spread within a single trade. Beyond this, it was impossible to organise. Societies for unskilled workers, or for cross-skilled groups, simply did not and could not exist. So, while the Combination Acts did not crush trade unionism, they inhibited their development. It was not until 1824 that trades unionism as such ceased to be illegal, when the Acts were repealed. A massive flood of trade union activity was released and a strike movement evolved, aiming to recoup past losses. The repeal of the Acts simply legitimised an already existing situation. An entirely new historical position now existed. “From that day Labour became a power in England”, wrote the then Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne. [9] Society was deeply divided, for real power lay in the hands of a tiny elite of the wealthy, vastly outnumbered by a huge agricultural labour force, but, also and more importantly, a growing industrial working class. A pioneer `sociologist’, Patrick Colquhoun, revealed that labouring people outnumbered their rulers by eight to one, amongst the 18 million population. [10]

% of the population
Aristocracy and bourgeois (capitalist class) 2.26
Professional and petty bourgeois 9.26
Artisans and skilled workers 24.88
Unskilled workers and farm workers 63.59

This social divide was huge and the pressure from 4.5 million skilled workers was particularly great.

Philanthropic measures generally were scarce, although there were examples. In Derby in 1816, a large amount of money was raised by public subscription for food for the unemployed and some public work was created in cutting down the hills on the high roads around the town. [11] Generally, however, social expenditure, whether private or public, was limited. Poor Law expenditure in the county in 1834 was only 5/- a head of the population – a very low level indeed compared to other counties. £261,710 was donated to the top twenty charities in 1832, for spiritual relief via religious tract societies; the spiritual mood of the poor being seen as of greater value than their physical well being. Such conflicts and contrasts seemed calculated to boost the very concept of trades unionism. Arguing the case for trade unions in 1825, a contemporary writer explained that, faced with “a redundancy of hands” in every trade, the workers had no alternative to accepting the wages and employer offered, “unless they be in a union”. [12]

2. The Textile Industry:
i) Child Labour

Without doubt the most disturbing feature of the textile industry in this period was the excessive and sometimes brutal use of child labour. After the passing of an Act in 1767, the child population in the workhouses had increased enormously as the authorities of London and the newly created big towns, anxious to rid themselves of the financial burden of local orphans, siphoned them off. The new cotton mills of Derby were viewed by them with relief, for orphaned children could be sent to their new ’employers’ at seven years of age for a fourteen year ‘apprenticeship’. Special ‘prentice houses’ were built next to the new mills and these children spent their early years in cruelty and drudgery. [13] Frances Homer, MP, speaking in the House of Commons on the 6th June 1815, said that: “These apprentice children were often sent one, two or three hundred miles from their place of birth, separated for life from all relations”. In one case children had been “put up for sale with a bankrupt’s effects and were advertised publicly as a piece of property”. [14]

Overall, child labour was crucial to the development of the cotton mills and there was very little legal protection for the children. Even those like Arkwright, who was nowhere near as unscrupulous as some of his fellow masters and who prided himself on benevolence and liberality, relied on gross exploitation. That benevolence of Arkwright has rather obscured the fact that his fortune was based on those harsh places populated by a large unwilling workforce. A classic document of the day gives some idea of what it was like – “A Memoir of Robert Blincoe” by John Brown was re-published by the radical working class newspaper, the “Poor Man’s Advocate” in 1832. The memoir detailed an account of “apprentices” at Litton Mill, Derbyshire, living on water, porridge, oatcake and broth, working 6am to 9pm daily. The orphan “apprentice”, (or, to be more accurate, bonded slave) Robert Blincoe, was born in 1792 and did not become free until 1813, after 14 years in “apprenticeship”.

One of eighty children sent by St. Pancras workhouse, he first worked at Lowndham Mill, Nottinghamshire. The staple diet contrasted sharply with the image he had been given at the workhouse – it would be roast beef and plum pudding, he had been told – but milk porridge was all he would get. [15] There was no soap, making cleanliness next to impossible. The “apprentices” slept two to a bed in dirty, tiered cots. Working conditions were appalling. It was forbidden to sit down at all during the long 16 hour shifts in the hot mills. Beatings and even torture for “idleness” were frequent and one governor, William Woodward of Cromford, was a complete tyrant. Blincoe reported that in ten years his body was never free from contusions brought about by beatings. [16]

Escape was futile. The generous reward of five shillings provided to those who ensured the return of a fleeing apprentice, was more than enough to catch most. The ignorance and/or collusion of local magistrates ensured the ineffective operation of the scanty legislation deigned to control the working condition of “apprentices”. Accidents were frequent; Blincoe saw one, in which the mill machinery crushed a young girl so badly that “her blood (was) thrown about like water from a twirled mop”. [17] Miraculously, she was saved from death but for what kind of life? Brown saw the way “apprentices” were treated as part of an equation. They were “treated and consumed as a part of the raw material”. [18]

For most of his “apprenticeship”, Blincoe worked at Ellice Needham’s Litton Mill, near Buxton – an even worse experience than at Lowndham Mill! The food was so bad that at first, while the established “apprentices” at Litton Mill “ravenously devoured” it, the transferred Lowndham children “turned away from (it) with loathing”. Within days they would be so hungry that they would “be glad to pick from a dunghill” any thrown out scraps. [19] Some became so upset at their treatment that they deliberately stole, so as to be caught and sent to Botany Bay as a preferable alternative! [20] Apart from this, the only release was death, and indeed deaths from disease were frequent – but the supply of orphan children was great enough to fill the places of the dead. Despite the fact that the law was supposed to be on the side of the oppressed “apprentices” at Litton Mill, they were utterly unaware of their rights and totally unable to obtain justice. Blincoe tried to complain at one stage and found it an entirely impossible task. Towards the end of the apprenticeship, Blincoe, with some others, resolved to limit the working day of 14 hours to a more reasonable one, only to be immediately turned out of the apprentice house. The next day Needham cruelly beat Blincoe with a walking stick, breaking it in the process!

Blincoe decided to run to Thornelly, the magistrate at Stanton, some eleven miles away, to report his master. Stopping off only at Ashford for refreshment at a friendly stockinger’s home, he raced all the way. Arriving there, he was turned away by the servants who told him to complain to the “justices’ meeting” (or magistrates’ ‘court’) at the Bull’s Head in “Heam” (presumably Eyam?). After the round trip of 22 miles, he arrived back at Litton. The next day he appeared in front of the magistrates, but they could not make a decision on his complaint in the absence of Mr Needham. On his pleading, they gave him a letter to show his master, protecting him from a beating for reporting the affair. To no avail, however, for the master beat him for his temerity; so much so, so ferociously, that he was scarcely able to stand upright.

By the weekend Blincoe again sneaked out to run to a lawyer at Whetstone Hall (Wheston), where he waited seven hours to no end largely because the lawyers (Shore and Cheek) were friends of Needham. This time Blincoe returned to Litton and simply gave up; however, he extracted an agreement from the overseer not to beat him if he promised not to run away again. Concerned altruism, regard for a profitable environment and even guilt motivated some sections of the establishment to introduce legal controls of the working conditions of apprentices in 1802. But even successive parliamentary investigations, from 1816-19, did not reveal the state of things at Litton Mill because “the surgeon and magistrates were friends and guests of the master”. [21] How many more places like Litton were there?

Illustration: Blincoe’s journey

Life after “apprenticeship” was easier – but only by degrees. Blincoe left Litton Mill, quite legally, after he had received his indentures, to find work at Oldknow’s cotton factory at “Mellow”. This is, in fact Mellor, now just yards over the border of Derbyshire towards Manchester but then firmly in Derbyshire. A remarkable excavation is underway at the old mill right now – see `Bob’s Mellor Mill Diary:
http://www.mellorarchaeology.org.uk/mellor-mill-1792-1892/bobs-mill-diary.html
My thanks also to Ann Papageorgiou, who has written to say that she used to play in the ruins of Oldknow’s factory as a child and therefore knows the area well. “Oldknow’s factory (often called ‘Mellor Mill’) is on the Derbyshire-side of the river Goyt and was therefore in Derbyshire when Blincoe worked there”, Ms Papageorgiou writes, also quoting from a local history book by Ann Hearle (‘Marple and Mellor’, part of Archive Photograph series): ‘From the time of the Saxons, when counties were first established, Mellor and Ludworth were in Derbyshire and Marple in Cheshire, with the boundary formed by the rivers Goyt and Etherow. In 1895 Marple Urban District Council was established and in 1936, Mellor and Ludworth were, not without opposition, ‘moved’ from Derbyshire into Cheshire and became part of Marple Urabn District’ (p7)”.

This superior and benevolent employer started Blincoe at the poverty wage of 1s 0d a week, when at that time agricultural labourers were earning 16s 0d to 20s 0d. Despite this, Blincoe admits that the lives of Oldknow’s apprentices were not as bad as that which he had just left. Oldknow provided plain, but good and sufficient meals; his apprentices were kept clean and decently dressed; they were not beaten. Nonetheless, the hours were 6am to 7pm. Blincoe was being grossly underpaid compared to the other adult workers on account of his debilitated state. He applied for a wage increase, which he partially got, but shortly afterwards he got ‘the bag’ (i.e. the sack). [22] Life then, as an adult unskilled worker in the cotton mills, still left a lot to be desired and Blincoe reports that discipline, if not exactly cruel, was certainly harsh.

So, if Litton Mill operated easily on the fringes of the law, what was it like in establishments that tried to work within the law? A report of the “lookers over the governers” from around 1821, on the conditions of apprentices at a factory near Shirland, Derbyshire, tell us all. [23] The meals were considered to be very good and consisted of:
Breakfast at 8am – boiled milk and bread.
Dinner at 12 noon – meat and potatoes.
Supper at 7pm – boiled milk and bread.

In winter, when milk was often unobtainable, it was substituted for by gruel – “made of the last meal” – or, if merely scarce, it was mixed with gruel to make porridge. As for clothing, the report goes on rather apologetically to say that “if there has been any neglect on my part I am very sorry for it”. The overlooker was confident that “no Governor or matron ever asked me for anything for the children that I ever denied”. The sleeping rooms were, he believed comfortable and “with one exception, and the alteration, then pointed out was attended to… (Moreover)…the sheets are changed every three weeks”. Exceptionally, the apprentices received some ‘instruction’ (education), though no doubt a 6am start at the Amber works was not conducive to much learning at the four evenings a week as Sunday morning compulsory lessons in knitting, the three ‘Rs’ and religious instruction. So, even the supposed models of perfection were, by modern standards, very harsh places of work.

ii) Adult Labour and the Strike Movement of 1824

Adult workers fared somewhat differently, however. They performed the skilled jobs and the framework knitters were still in many ways to the forefront of trade union organisation. But their newfound organisations were still pursuing the same old problems with the same old strategy – petitioning Parliament. Very rapidly the knitters learnt to advance their cause by utilising many strategies at once – Luddism, petitioning and modernistic trade union action. Once Luddism had faded away, new emphasis was given to the latter two approaches. There was continual pressure on the Houses of Parliament for permission to introduce a bill for “preventing frauds and abuses in the framework knitting manufacture and in the payment of persons employed therein”. [24] Witnesses before the 1819 committee on framework knitters’ wages, all agreed that wages were in the region of 14s 0d to 15s 0d a week for 12 to 13 hours a day. However, the knitters’ hoped-for Act of Parliament was predictably defeated and the mood of anger at this failure was sharply expressed by a general strike throughout the three textile counties, involving some 14,000 stockingers. The strike, as well as representing a reaction against the failure of the Bill, also positively aimed for rate increases, which were won in some areas. [25] This relative success of the 1819 general strike motivated the knitters to resort to that measure even more decisively in 1821.

Work prices were generally back to the pre-1819 figures by now, but on this occasion the masters were not going to sit back and wait for defeat. The invoked the Combination Acts. Four of the knitters’ committee were brought to the Nottingham law courts and, despite pleading that they only aimed to relieve extreme poverty and not to cause industrial upset, they received three months gaol. Faced with this, the strike movement collapsed amidst general confusion. Such a dramatic development attracted the attention of the radical political movement and many volunteered their support to the knitters, including the famous pamphleteer and journalist, William Cobbett. In his open letter to the stocking weavers of Lancashire, Nottingham and Derby, during the 1821 dispute, Cobbett sharply identified the cause of the conflict as being the new productive relationship existing between master and men.

Again, three years later, a major dispute occurred – despite the previous use of the Combination Acts. Particularly high duties on silk caused acute poverty to the knitters in Derby in the early part of 1824. In the plain silk hose trade, Derby knitters collected almost £300 in three months as part of a provident scheme to give benefit to unemployed workers, in itself a phenomenal achievement. An agreed prices scale had been introduced in 1817, but was little used. In response to pressure, the masters continually promised that they would revert to the 1817 scale when conditions were improved. But this never seemed to come about.

In April 1824, the framework knitters produced a handbill, addressed to the “Inhabitants of the town and county of Derby, and every friend of humanity”, in which they explained that they had so far tolerated being “out of employ” for seven weeks in a “peaceable manner”. [26] The masters countered this by propaganda about the knitters’ wages – a familiar move to the modern reader perhaps! The knitters’ committee were outraged and sent a letter of opposition to the masters’ claims to ‘Derby & Chesterfield Reporter’, bitterly trying to set the record straight. [27] The ‘Reporter’ aimed to act as a moderator of public opinion by producing detailed figures of wages claimed to be accurate over a period of seven years for a 12-hour day, compared to the price of wheat. (For what it is worth modern equivalents are provided for ease of reading, although readers may wish to consult the note on valuing historical prices at the end of `Defence and Defiance’.)

Average wage Wheat per quarter
Range in shillings and modern equivalent cost in shillings and modern equivalent

(The latter figure of wages in the range was that offered by hosiery manufacturers!)

Despite its ‘Liberal’ pretentious, the Reporter, noting that there had been “processions of a numerous body of the workmen in the silk hose branch” of late, revealed its attitude quite sharply. Applications for parish relief during the ‘turn-out’, or dispute, worried the paper, for it believed that the knitters should rely on their own funds and not appeal for public assistance; “although laws against combinations are still in force, yet there is a very general impression in the public mind that all such enactments are, if not useless, at least unequal in their operation”. Not all were so unhelpful, and among the many donations from working class groups like the ‘Burton Road Friendly Society’ were donations from the concerned ‘middle-class’. This financial support would be decisive in ensuring victory.

The knitters returned to work on Monday, 3rd May 1824, with the hosiers having conceded the 1817 price list. The Leicester framework knitters, after the same thing, were not so lucky and were still out in mid-June. Interestingly, the ‘Reporter’ noted that locally the “complete neglect with which the Combination Laws were regarded on both sided was a factor in the peaceable character of the dispute.” [28] Bursting with pride and glee at their success, the Derby framework knitters inserted the following advertisement, addressed to the people of Derby: “The framework knitters of the town and county of Derby beg leave to return their most sincere thanks to a generous public, for their liberal support during the late “turn-out”; and to inform them at the same time, that they have commenced a UNION for the support of each other when out of employ. Any donation or subscription will be most thankfully received at Mr. SMITH’s sign of the greyhound, Friargate; Mr. MARRIOT’S Lord Nelson Wardwick; Mr. DAVIES’ Greenman St. Peter St., Mr. WEBSTER’S White Hart Bridge; also by all the Booksellers in the town.” Most of these public houses were already well-frequented haunts of other trade societies.

After this magnificent degree of support, the knitters found themselves with £60 left over after the dispute with which to start their union. [29] Workers in other sections of the textile trade in the town rapidly followed the knitters example. In October tape weavers at Pigott, Bagley and Madeley turned-out. Average earnings there, after rent of looms was deducted, didn’t exceed 10s 9d per week! The Reporter commented that this was “be speaking (the) prosperity in that branch of the trade”.[30] Similarly, the framework knitters of Chesterfield struck for an advance in mid-November 1824, for all that time the hosiery trade was considered to be ‘brisk’ and even the Reporter believed the workers’ demands to be “reasonable”.[31] Trades unionism spread like wildfire. When the Lancashire calico printing industry spread into north-western Derbyshire in 1825, as the first cotton mill was converted to the new process of printed textiles, workers rapidly organised in this newer industry. Lancashire regularly began to press itself as a competitor to Derbyshire. Places like Darley Abbey Cotton Mill, near Derby, employed over 500 people, a fairly average number for the county, whilst in Manchester the mills were then quite small. At one point it was argumentative which area would become the centre of the cotton industry, but in the end the convenient location of the northwest to the ports settled the problem in their favour. [32] But unionism was firmer established in some ways at this point in Derbyshire, as was the trade itself. An announcement in the press, signed by the men from Crich, Wessington and Wirksworth, to the gentlemen employers in the calico, gingham and fancy weaving business, reveals the toughness of the operatives. The men called the masters to a meeting at the Bulls Head, Crich, to consider an advance as a “turn-out will be very contrary to our desires, but we cannot bear to go quietly on in slavery and poverty”. [33]

Throughout the textile trade the masters resolved to resist the wages explosion forced upon them. By successful combination themselves, they began to introduce wage cuts designed to reverse the previously conceded increases. Some sections of workers were prepared to stand considerable privation to achieve and maintain justice and the 1824 strike movement began to attain a sharpness not seen earlier. At Heanor over sixty stone weight of bread was distributed to framework knitters who had been “from a month past, standing out for an advance of wages”. [34] Frame-breaking began to reappear. At the very end of the year, on the 31st December at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, over 40 men “with their hats chalked in front, and armed with bludgeons and short sticks with spikes in went to the shop of William Plackett, a stocking maker at Breaston. They forcibly unscrewed parts of his frames and took them away with them.”

A large crowd unsuccessfully resisted a later attempt by the constabulary to arrest one of the leaders – James Kelly – who was tried for felony. The Reporter believed that: “If the stocking maker can by peaceable means and fair endeavours obtain an advance in his wages he had undoubtedly a right to do so.” [35] So, it was acceptable to engage in the tactic of quietly starving, hoping to outlast the master. But woe betide anyone who interferes with the rights of property. The knitters didn’t see it quite as the Reporter did and the trend back to Luddism as a form of negotiating continued in the following year. In the summer, one Joseph Harris was committed to the Borough Gaol, charged with “wilfully breaking a lace frame and (having) destroyed certain lace then being in the frame, the property of Messrs Boden and Morley”. [36]

A fall in wages the following year saw “such loud complaints as to induce the masters to agree to an advanced (price) list”. [37] Some masters, however, cut the lists and this was resisted in Derby. A meeting of silk weavers was held at the Durham Ox for the “purpose of adopting measures to secure a proper remuneration of their labour.” A committee was appointed to correspond with the “General Central Association” and it was decided to petition Parliament for a “Wage Protecting Bill”. [38] The earlier defeats in 1825-26 ensured that this attempt to recapture the glories of 1824 failed and the movement fell apart. After four general strikes, attempted insurrections and Luddism, the framework knitters’ militancy was thoroughly exhausted and trades unionism in that trade lay dormant for two decades. A cotton spinners’ union was formed in 1829, confining its membership to males; women were urged to form their own union. A male/female weaver’s union was set up, but both failed to effectively get off the ground in the county at this stage.

3. Early Trades Unions in Derbyshire

i) The Hatters, Brushmakers and the Tramp System

The Derby Society of Journeymen Hatters was a pioneer trade union that, like the knitters, had unsuccessfully petitioned against a bill before Parliament, which would have removed the limits on the number of apprentices a master might take on. In common with all other early trade societies, the hatters had a strict ratio of ‘boys’ to men and the range of their activities centred strongly on the provident, benefit side of unionism. The Hatters were, like the early framework knitting journeymen, very much in favour of tramping. Modern idiom assigns the word ‘tramp’ a disgusting or derogatory tone; but it was not always so. The strict control exerted by the trade societies over the numbers entering their trade meant that some mechanism needed to be used to control the only surplus of labour that ever arose. That is to say, the results of the primitive boom/slump of the early capitalist system. The ups and downs of industry tended to be quite local in some trades and the resort to tramping the surplus skilled workers to localities that needed them prevented the entry of excess workers into the trade.

This characteristic of control of the trade by the use of tramping was quite general to the skilled artisans. Another trade prominent in the county was the Brushmakers, which had lodges in Derby and Staveley. The latter group had a coat of arms upon which they, in 1815, inscribed a motto, which underlines just how crucial this trade characteristic was to them:
“In peace and unity may we support our trade,
And keep out those that would our rights invade.” [39]

Initially, the tramping system developed slowly and rather off-hand. Although it was a direct copy of the old company systems, the early trades unions developed tramping as a practical response to the very real problems they faced. Skilled tradesmen tended to give a hand to a fellow worker as he called at the workshop for a job. As the societies grew the caller would be invited to the clubhouse. Gradually, the special signs of secret societies were adopted to enable a caller at the public house to be accepted into the society’s hospitality.

By the 1820s many of the new trade unions had developed quite a sophisticated system. At this time Brushmakers had less than 1,400 members in the whole of England, but had the most advanced tramping system of all, with a printed tramping route produced in 1829 that stretched over 1,210 miles, through 44 towns including Derby. The route went through Derby from Leicester to Staveley and on to Sheffield. A complex pattern of tramping relief varied according to miles travelled, but the payment for beer and a bed was standard. All this was administered by means of a centralised accounting system, still leaving local branches with considerable autonomy. A brushmaker calling at the Green Man in Staveley, or the Lord Nelson in Derby, would be given journey money, a shilling’s worth of beer, a meal and a bed for the night. A whistled tune of five notes might be expected, as a recognition code. The details of this would be entered into a small book called a blank, which he carried around with him. Once having completed the entire tramp of 1,210 miles without getting a job, the Society would give him unemployment pay. His blank might include the following information if he had passed through the East Midlands to Sheffield:

The local secretary of the Society in 1829 was Robert Kay. [40] There were five brushmaking firms in Derby itself in 1835, which would surely have all been historically organised by the Society; these firms were:

Speculation that these were unionised is likely to be sound, for we are not talking about later forms of union organisation, whereby loyalty is contested by and with the master, at least not in such as trade as brushmaking, even at this date. It is as well to recall that the origin of the British meaning of the word for mass workers’ organisations, `trades unions’ (which spellcheckers, contrary to ordinary use, have been programmed to recognise as being possessive of trades!). In contrast, American English renders the name as `labour unions’, for the very good reason that protection of the trade was not such a distinctive feature of the history of workers in that country. Thus, in Britain, especially England, wherever a distinctive trade existed the point of the workers’ society was to protect the trade and it was simply not in an apprenticed journeyman’s interest to reject belonging to the appropriate trade society. Nonetheless, from here onwards, masters in many industries, as trade gave way to industry, would now begin to apply the `modern’ capitalistic ethos of seeking non-union shops.

(The National Society of Brushmakers and General Workers, the direct descendent of the old Brushmaker’s Society was still in existence in the early 1980s, with 1,600 members and headquarters in Watford. No doubt, its role would have evolved into a classic modern trade union by that stage but the organisation appears to have faded away with the melting away of modern manufacturing capacity to developing countries. )

In the 19th century, nearly all the skilled trades tramped, there were the following:

Only cotton-spinners, potters and most miners did not tramp – but it was practically universal amongst skilled workers and their unions all had tramping systems. The blacksmiths had 36 calling places, while the Brushmakers increased theirs to 64 by the 1830’s. In 1824 the printers had 43, the steam engine makers 37 and the shoemakers as many as 80. [43] Between 1819 and 1834, the shoemakers had a substantial organisation in Derby, while the “Original Society of Papermakers”, founded in 1800, covered some, if not all, of the five mills in the county. Little Eaton was a stopping off place on the national tramping tour for twenty years from 1830. Most of these societies would have included a stop in Derbyshire, usually Derby, which had 135 pubs in 1835, many of which catered for the unions. It is tempting to conclude that the ‘Butcher’s Arms’, the ‘Dusty Miller’ and the ‘Plasterer’s Arms’ were union clubhouses. But whether they were or not, there was a strong tradition of naming pubs after a close connection with a specific trade and tramping played no small part in this.

It seems that pubs were of great importance in the lives of the people. Speaking of the 18th century, one writer said that no-one can study the history of this time “…without being impressed by the truly immense space which drinking occupied in the mental horizon of the young… (and) old”. The writer had in mind, no doubt the permanently besotted state of the elite of society. Nonetheless, such acceptable, even fashionable, habits meant little ostracism yet existed of the early unions for using public houses. The absence of safe, affordable and pleasant beverages of any kind, other than alcohol, combined with the traditions of the hospitable inn to provide a safe haven. Pubs were cheap central meeting places where all could go. Landlords were mainly interested in getting custom and working class organisations brought people aplenty. Particular publicans were sometimes loyal to a particular trade – maybe their own at sometime – calling their establishments after the tools of the trade or the trade itself. The Masons used the ‘Masons Arms’ in Edward Street, Derby, in the 1850’s; but arguments or vagaries of trade often caused changes – the Masons used the ‘Baker’s Arms’ in Buxton in the 1850s and were followed by the Tailors some thirty years later. [44]

Tramping played another important role of strengthening industrial disputes. No employer dared to take on scab labour in a strike situation, for, in those days of shortage of skilled labour, he might end up blacklisted for all time. But the reverse was true – strikers could and did work elsewhere as an effective tactical complement to their strike action. The striker would have a special coloured card to confer special status while seeking work. In fact a variety of coloured cards would be use, defining ‘free’ members, ordinary members and strikers. The tramp was therefore an absolute necessity of the early unions to keep the number of men in the trade low and the union rate high.

ii) The Horse-nail Makers’ Society of Belper

Nail making was of particular importance to Belper – it had been an established industry there since the 14th century. From 1776 onwards nail making became quite industrialised and Belper was especially reliant on the industry until textiles took over. The nail makers of the town were certainly organised at least as early as 1822, but must have had some organisation in the years of technical illegality to emerge with such vigour. A ‘national’ society centred on Belper was established that year, with quite a sophisticated rulebook. The society, called the ‘Horse-nail Makers’ Union Society’, was founded on the 14th January 1822 and made its position clear from the outset. Its limited and, at that stage, impractical aim was to: “restore the trade to a position which will enable us to maintain our prices by legal means, and to restore mutual interest between us and our employers”. To achieve this it would be necessary that horse-nail makers should “unite in bonds of indissoluble friendship and mutual respect for each others welfare, to obtain that end”.

There were to be three districts, Thorpe in Yorkshire, Belper in Derbyshire and Netherton in Staffordshire and Worcestershire, which would all form the ‘national’ body. However, Rule IV specified that “Belper shall be the centre of all communications”. The subscription was set at 3d a week to enable the society to “render assistance more complete” Each local society would retain £2 for every member in a fund so that “assistance afforded to a suffering society” could be paid at the rate of six shillings a week for each member – a local strike fund in effect. The society operated quite efficiently, issuing membership cards and quarterly reports, and operating in quite a modern way generally. However, its key concern was an old one – that of excessive apprenticeship – “in consequence of the immoderate number of apprentices… (in) the trade, it is resolved to stop the evil by all possible means”. [45]

Adam Smith, the original and definitive economist of capitalism, saw the nail factory as the paradigm of the system. Its efficiency, through the use of the principle of division of labour, was illustrative of what was need in all industries, he thought. It enabled the deskilling of the originally craft task, with the consequent reduction in labour costs. An untrained boy could make thousands of nails a day, whereas a time-served smith would only manufacture one tenth of that by his own efforts.

iii) Journeymen Tailors

The tailors had combined periodically in the 18th century locally, but came quite out into the open in Derby in 1825. A turnout for an increase in wages began on 2nd April and within days the men had won the full nine shillings extra a week they were asking for. [46] This initial success was much resented by the masters and, biding their time, in November they dismissed the union operatives and advertised for new men: “To journeymen tailors: Wanted a number of good workmen who may meet with constant employ by applying to any of the respective masters of this place. NB Wages equal to 24s per week, but none need apply who belongs to the union or combination.” This was in effect a unilateral reduction of wages, breaking the agreement of earlier in the year and seeking to break the union itself. The tailors resolved to set up a cooperative. Immediately underneath the masters’ newspaper notice the journeyman tailors had theirs, seeking custom for work done at union rates. Orders could be left at the Crown and Mitre, Amen Alley. [47]

The instigator of the dispute was one William Collumbell, who had been a foreman at one of the master tailors’ shops. Collumbell announced in December that he had formed ‘a union’ with the journeymen tailors of all the other larger towns in the surrounding counties. The master tailors, by now, were producing goods by labour at non-union rates and Collumbell promised that the union could quote for making clothes by seeing him at “the top of St. Mary’s Gate.” He complained bitterly of the inferior quality of the masters’ goods and promised to match the goods and prices of the embargoed products. [48] (A Thomas Collumbell played a major part in the 1833-34 Derby turnout, so it is intriguing to speculate that, given the unusual name, we may have here encountered the father’s, or uncle’s, earlier activities.) The tailors had learnt that it was not possible to organise in one town alone and that without general unity of the workmen in the trade it was not possible to beat the masters by combination. It was an important lesson for them and one not to be forgotten.

ii) Tin-plate Workers

There was certainly a society covering tin plate workers in Derby at the beginning of the 19th century. Derby journeymen of all trades, including the metal working industries, were involved in the collection of signatures to a petition to Parliament in June 1800, along with many other towns. This sought to repeal the 1799 Combination Act. Whilst, more specifically, one Joseph Bamford travelled to Derbyshire from Preston on a tramping card of a tin plate society in 1808. He received “1s 6d Dinner himself and wife 1s 9d”.

The National Union of Tinplate Workers, founded in 1821 as a federation of certain local societies, by December 1822 had a branch in Derby. There were only seven members, but they sent as much as £9 in support of a seven month old dispute in the tin plate trade at Wolverhampton that year. (Over £944 was collected in all.) This dispute, which was only partially successful, was over a 10% imposed wage cut and was notable for the treacherous behaviour of a Derby member, contrasting sharply with the solidarity of the others. One Thomas Cox, a native of Wolverhampton, found himself out of work in Derby and went to one of the embargoed firms “to injure the cause by going to work in one of the manufactories, where he might have been supported”, that is to say whereas he might otherwise have received union benefit for being out of work. [49] The society’s general report in 1824 detailed the accounts of the Derby branch as follows:
£ s d
Proportionate share of expenses 3 13 6
Expenses of tramps and men on calamity 3 1 3
Letters and parcels, secretary’s salary etc. 16 4
Arrears due 1 16 5
Remitted to the Audit Committee 4 0 0

All indicating not only a high level of activity and financial stability. By 1831 there were 11 members in Derby and 42 elsewhere in the county and a tramping member from Derby was recorded by the Liverpool society as being there in 1837. Similar evidence for the continued existence of organisation amongst tin plate workers in Derby arises for the 1840s. The trade will have seen a big uplift in work associated with the coming of the Midland Railway in 1836. Glasgow tramp records indicate Derby members in 1841-2 and Derby members with card numbers No 6 and No 11 appear in Liverpool in 1843 and 1845. [49] (The tin plate workers were eventually to become part of the National Union of Sheet Metal Workers (NUSMCHDE), which in the 1980s joined TASS, which in turn formed MSF with the ASTMS, which went on to create Amicus with the AEEU.)

v) Blacksmiths [50]

The Derby Friendly Smiths’ Society was founded at the Royal Oak Inn in Derby on 22nd March 1822. The rules, which were legally registered fourteen months later, reflect the caution that needed to be adopted at the time. Members were prohibited from introducing strangers, or engaging in “political discourse, seditious sentiments or songs”. While we can be fairly certain that the ban was more honoured in the breach than in the observance, prudence dictated the wise course of conforming, on the surface at least, to the law. While the society met at a pub, it was severe in its rules with members who came into “the clubroom intoxicated”. For dangerous talk could come out with the drink. A drink steward or marshal was therefore appointed, not so much to fetch the beer as to keep everyone in check with how much they drank. The society allowed a limited amount of ale to be consumed out of its funds. Rule XVIII stipulated that the marshal should “keep the reckoning, and if he calls for more beer than the club allows that night, he shall pay for it himself”. Beer could only be ordered through the marshal and anyone drinking “out of his … turn” could be fined sixpence. Severe penalties were imposed for all such infringements of club rules. Tramping benefit was also introduced and paid up members could call on the foremen of recognised shops for jobs in other towns. Where the smith could get no work, he would get “his supper, one pint of beer, one night’s lodging and one penny for every mile he may have travelled since last relieved”. Such provision naturally required close liaison between other towns and, in consequence, a national society of smiths began genuinely to emerge. The Blacksmith’s genealogical history may be traced to today’s general union, the GMB.

vi) China Clay Workers

China production grew rapidly in Derby and as the town became a centre of the industry the numbers of employees at the china works rose, from seventy in 1790, to two hundred some twenty seven years later. Some of these workers were organised – especially the skilled trades. The elite were the hand painters, who earned top wages and were thought of as ‘educated and independent’. The Derby Tories saw them as a dangerous set of radicals, so much so that, in 1813, the True Blue Club refused to place an order in Derby for some china they required for their club house, giving the job to a competitor in Worcester. [51] By 1832 a National Union of Operative Potters was set up and there were certainly delegates from Derbyshire at its conference the following year. [52] Soon it had 8,000 members, mostly in Staffordshire, but many in Derby. [53] The union was to collapse in 1837, but was later re-established. There are direct links with today’s Ceramic & Allied Trades Union (CATU).

vii) Building Trades

Building workers, as we have seen, were organised in Derby quite early on, especially masons, bricklayers and woodworkers. A large meeting of bricklayers was held on Monday 25th April 1825 at the Mason’s Arms in Derby, with the intention of forming a society for “preventing any person in future learning their business who is not a bound apprentice for the term of seven years”. A monthly contribution was agreed to. [54] Wood workers organised too; in 1833 delegates of cabinetmakers throughout the country met in Liverpool to form a national union. The Derby Society had nine members out of a total of 1,020. Carpenters formed the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASC&J) from a number of local societies in 1827 and a joiners’ society was certainly based in Derby by 1836, but more probably from the very beginning of the society. [55] Stone and woodworkers’ craft societies were eventually all amalgamated in today’s UCATT.

viii) Coachmaking

Derby was a minor centre for certain kinds of coach building. The Coachmakers’ society – The United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers – can certainly be dated in Derby to 1834; however, it is likely that they were also present, in some form, much earlier. There were four Coachmaking firms in the towns, at least one was certainly organised and, most likely, they all were:

The UKSC emerged from a nine-month conflict in the north-west of England, during the course of which support was sought and won nationally. Although no central organisation existed, over £5,000 (a good wage for a workers would be £1 10s 0d a week) was donated by Coachmakers in over 100 towns, including Derby. The UKSC would later become part of the National Union of Vehicle Builders (NUVB), which in turn later still became part of the Automotive Group of the Transport & General Workers’ Union , the T&G.

ix) Foundry Workers

If some found it easy to organise because of their skilled status and relatively good wages, others faced serious difficulties. Workers at foundries in Chesterfield were getting only 15s 0d a week in May 1795 and things did not improve with the Napoleonic Wars. [58] Only with the onset of trades unionism were foundry workers’ wages, if not conditions, much improved. Indeed the iron moulders (skilled foundry workers responsible for the manufacture of the moulds) in Derby became particularly strongly organised. Founded in the town in 1817, one of the first in the country, the lodge was – in common with 28 others – entirely autonomous until the 1824 repeal enabled the Friendly Ironmakers’ Society (FIMS) to function. [59] (Eventually, the Foundry Workers would become part of the Amalgamated Engineering & Electrical Union, now part of amicus.) Foundries were to become increasingly important for the county as demand for machines in the textile trade mushroomed. In 1806 there were eleven furnaces in Derbyshire, producing in excess of 9,000 tons a year in total. By 1830 there were eighteen furnaces producing 18,000 tons. [60] There were five key iron founders in Derby itself by 1835: [61]

The Britannia and Derwent Foundries would grow to become particularly important. However, it would be firms like Smith’s and the giant Butterley Company in North-East Derbyshire that would dominate production in the 1830s.

Ironworkers were a particular moving spirit behind the next major development in trade union history – John Doherty’s National Association for the Protection of Labour (NAPL).

x) The National Association for the Protection of Labour (NAPL)

The first local group supporting NAPL seems to have been a Derbyshire society of (probably) textile printers that joined in April 1830. [63] However, the Derby and Belper FIMS branches, along with the Derby Blacksmiths, were the actual local founders of NAPL. The blacksmiths built on their own organisation of 1822 to help develop the alliance of ironworkers, the Associated Fraternity of Iron Forgers, which was founded in Derby in 1830. It was, thus, quite easy for Derby ironworkers to realise the potential of NAPL, which aimed to bring together all unions in all trades for the first time. Thomas Matthews of the Derby smiths’ union, met with Nottingham smiths, moulders and fender makers, at the George and Dragon in Nottingham, on the 23rd August 1830, to form a local NAPL, during a propaganda tour by John Doherty, the national leader. [64] NAPL rapidly grew, bringing together about 150 existing trade societies and establishing itself as especially strong in five counties, including Derbyshire. [65] Cotton spinners especially supported NAPL, but textile workers, ironworkers, mechanics and miners all joined up. Derbyshire miners were won in their thousands to join NAPL in 1831 by delegates from Lancashire. Cotton spinners especially supported NAPL but textile workers, iron workers, mechanics and miners all joined up. Derbyshire miners were won in their thousands to the NAPL in 1831 by organising delegates from Lancashire. It is important to note this since, contrary to established myth, miners were not amongst the first sections of workers to organise, nor were they then the strongest. Indeed, non-union labour from Derbyshire was used to crush the Northumberland and Durham miners’ strike in 1832. [66]

As a NAPL and Blacksmiths’ local official, Thomas Matthews obviously considered theses problems at length, for his view was that many trades were holding back from total commitment to NAPL because they had been “deceived and disappointed in former struggles”. Nevertheless, the view of the NAPL was to “commend and admire the present glorious efforts to unity among the working classes. Divisions and dissensions in trades have proved destructive to the working classes and given victory to avaricious task masters.” Calling for “the death blow to all hurtful dissensions”, Matthews showed a keen sense of revolutionary politics. Speaking shortly after the 1830 revolution in France he said of these events: “The holy alliance has been wrested from unholy hands and given to the people of England and France in solid friendship and unity which so unhappily prevails at this eventful and glorious crisis: but let it be recollected that the holy alliance in the working classes is no less glorious, honourable and praiseworthy”. [67]

Under Matthew’s guidance, the formal establishment of Derby’s own NAPL came with the convening of a meeting of some 200-300 people at the Nag’s Head in the town itself. [68] Thirteen trade societies in Derby supported the Association from the outset. [69] NAPL was, above all, a defensive organisation of workers. Each union joining paid £1, plus one shilling per member, per week, thereafter. If any of the affiliated bodies struck against wage cuts, then each striker would receive eight shillings a week benefit. So finance was crucial to the organisation and Derbyshire, or more specifically Derby which provided a massively significant share, contributed strongly to the central organisation; sums sent from the county between July 1830 and September 1831 were: [70]

£ s d
Belper 2 6 8
Derby 105 0 7 1/4
Rest of Derbyshire 7 10 0

Total for Derbyshire) 114 17 3 1/4

Clearly Derby predominated in the county, but having made the point that finance was seen as the sinews of war by NAPL, it ended up falling down on the very thing in which it intended to excel. A major dispute in the textile trades developed in the spring of 1831, when the workers demanded a restoration of the 1824 rates. G Robinson, the Derby branch secretary of NAPL, visited Manchester to raise funds for the strikers but, while he received the “warmest pledges of support”, the financial response was disappointing. Despite these weaknesses, NAPL not only took root in some areas like Derby, but also actually grew afresh elsewhere in the county. John Doherty successfully spoke in Chesterfield in August 1831 to a group of workers who agreed to join the organisation. While speaking at the meeting, Doherty venomously attacked both publicans, some of whom refused the NAPL the use of rooms, and also the truck system, whereby workers were paid in kind, instead of in wages, often finding themselves irredeemably tied to the `company store’. (The word is Norman-French in origin, meaning exchange or barter.) Truck gave Derbyshire workers cause for complaint, just as it did in many others areas. Some successes were registered by the re-born trade union movement after 1825 amongst unskilled workers, exemplified by the fact that in this period one astonished complainant wrote to the Home Secretary over wages struggles of miners at Staveley. But NAPL was not a long-term success; it did not have the right ingredients at the right time. But the idea carried on – the concept of a grand union, uniting all trades and all workers would grip the imagination of many workers, not the least in Derby. The idea was nurtured by FIMS and the Builders in particular and eventually found expression when support for general and united trades unionism spread like wildfire in 1833-4. Derby would be the very testing ground for this new unionism.

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THE EARLY DAYS 1. Introduction 2. 17th Century Democrats 3. The crowd in action 4. Lead Mining in Derbyshire 5. From Guild to Union 6. The Woolcombers 7. Framework Knitting 8. Cotton Mills 9. The [...]